A film catalyst including a film-shaped base material and a catalyst supported thereon is known (WO 2005/035122). The film catalyst may be processed into a wave or honeycomb shape in order to increase a surface area. Unfortunately, a processor used in processing may cause troubles such as generation of wrinkles in a catalyst layer supported on the base material and partial detachment of the catalyst through the contact of the processor with the film catalyst.
JP-A 8-141393 describes a method of processing catalytic members, including sandwiching a metal base material having a catalyst layer between soft plate members, passing the sandwich between a pair of synthetic resin gears to give a wave shape, and heating the metal base material. In this patent, examples of the soft plate member include high-quality paper and polyethylene resin. In some cases, use of such a plate member cannot sufficiently relax a stress on the catalyst layer in an irregular space defined by teeth of gears, resulting in a damaged catalyst layer. Moreover, in the irregular space, a stress on the catalyst layer and the plate members increases and a stress loading on the synthetic resin gears also increases to impair durability of the gears. If the plate member gets wrinkles during running, a total thickness of the plate member in the wrinkle part substantially increases and the catalyst layer is subjected to very high stress to inevitably break mechanically. As described above, the method has many problems.
JP-A 2000-189814 describes a method of press-molding a catalyst-applied material including cloth or mesh of an inorganic fiber and a catalyst component applied thereon with a molding apparatus including a heat molding die, wherein the mold has a porous layer with flexibility on the surface thereof.